Wednesday, May 14, 2014

In 2012, I put pollen from Geum 'Flames of Passion' onto Geum urbanum a weedy tiny flowered "herb" commonly known as clove-root. I mostly was hoping to put a little diversity into my little population of Geum urbanum. Some things I'm looking to select for are bigger flowers, bright reds oranges and yellows, and any improvements in the "clove-scented-ness" of the roots. I know it's a long shot, but I was also hoping that maybe one of these guys would get genetically confused and make the clove scent in its foliage or flowers. We'll see...
Here's the tidy foliage of the row of seedlings:

Here's the first hybrid seedling to bloom, compared with the tiny yellow flower of Geum urbanum below it:

Here are four of the darkest bottomed iris seedlings I got from 'American Sweetheart' X ('Honky Tonk Blues' x Iris aphylla 'Balascuta'). The second picture shows the second seedling from the left, up close with my hand for scale. My plan is to interbreed these and see how much we can increase the expression of the dark bases.

Monday, May 5, 2014

It's one of my better purple-foliaged irises from Iris purpureobractea. Not the prettiest flowers but the foliage is what I've been focusing on.Well, the phone picture didn't make it but I'm back to post the picture the usual way...

And here's a second good one:

And a third, not so purple at the bases but got more of the purple bracts around the flowerbuds: